Milena Popova2015-03-31T14:31:45-04:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=milena-popovaCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Milena PopovaGood old fashioned elbow grease.Adding Insult to Injury: The Media Coverage of the Bisexual Asylum Seeker Casetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.47664662014-02-11T09:08:07-05:002014-04-13T05:59:01-04:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/milena-popova/a set of questions which had been asked of a bisexual asylum seeker during an interview by the UKBA. The questions are degrading, intrusive and deeply queerphobic. Yet the reporting of this incident in some mainstream media outlets is similarly concerning. On Saturday, the Guardian ran a story based on the Free Movement post, titled "Gay asylum seekers face 'humiliation'". The article talks repeatedly of "gay" or "gay and lesbian" asylum seekers; among quotes from immigration lawyers and LGB rights charities, the word "bisexual" appears only once in the entire piece, when describing the individual asylum seeker at the heart of the report.

This kind of bi erasure is almost routine for bisexual people - and we find it comes from our lesbian and gay friends just as often as from straight people. It is hurtful, but particularly in areas such as asylum and immigration, bi erasure, biphobia and stereotyping are downright dangerous. As bisexual immigrants go, I am extremely privileged: the country which issues my passport has not declared my existence illegal; I am white; I am an EU citizen (though that wasn't always the case), and therefore my right to stay in this country and my very life do not depend on my ability to navigate this maze, the love child of Orwell and Kafka, and give whatever the UKBA deems to be the "right" answers to questions such as "In [country] how many relationships have you had with women?" Others are not so lucky.

One wonders, too, what the "right" answer is to questions like "When x was penetrating you did you have an erection?" The trouble with this is that there are as many answers to this question as there are occasions upon which the particular sex act being asked about has been performed in human history. But regardless of your experience, only one of those will get you the magic ticket that allows you to stay in a country that might not execute you for who you are.

Questions like "How do you show your sexuality when you are in the UK?" and "How does that display you are bisexual?" almost naturally lead to "Why have you got to behave as a bisexual in [country]?" and "That was with x only and he initiated the contact you claim. Why can't you return and live a full life there?" The box one needs to fit in to "deserve" support and asylum is so tiny as to be almost non-existent for bisexual people.

This is why media coverage of this case and the way it persistently talks of "gay and lesbian" asylum seekers when the individual at the centre of it is actually bisexual, and the lines of questioning are very specifically and deliberately biphobic, is dangerous. It is another stitch in the giant invisibility cloak society has thrown over bisexual people. It makes it easier to perpetuate myths and stereotypes, to question whether bisexuals really exist; and that in turn makes it possible to set impossible standards for "proving" bisexuality and to deny people persecuted for who they are shelter when their story doesn't quite match those expectations.

It is vital for bisexual people's stories to be heard; for biphobia and bi erasure to be called out for what they are. Bisexuality doesn't fit neatly in a gay/straight narrative. That doesn't make biphobia any less hurtful or harmful - sometimes, as in this case, in a "life and death" sort of way.]]>What is the Olympic Legacy for Women's Sport?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17737932012-08-13T16:26:17-04:002012-10-13T05:12:11-04:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/milena-popova/Olympic missiles and other civil liberties issues aside, the Games exceeded my expectations right from the opening ceremony. One highlight for me have been the amazing women athletes - not just from Team GB but from around the world. From women footballers who - unlike their male counterparts - will take a kick in the face and cheerfully keep playing, to Kate Walsh playing hockey with a broken jaw, to Sarah Attar, the first female track and field athlete from Saudi Arabia, to Nicola Adams and Katie Taylor bagging the first Olympic gold medals in women's boxing, London 2012 has been a triumph for women's sport.

David Cameron has promised to extend funding for Olympic sport until Rio 2016. This is great news, but we cannot afford to continue with business as usual if we truly want to leverage the legacy of the Games for women in sport. Seeing women like Jessica Ennis, Jade Jones, Gemma Gibbons, Laura Trott, Lizzie Armitstead, Zoe Smith, and Rebecca Adlington (to name only a few) perform at the top of their field, set records and win medals will have inspired millions of girls and young women to take up sport. Seeing the huge variety of female body shapes represented in the Olympics - a lot more than we would usually see on our TV screens - and seeing women confident and happy in their bodies may perhaps even counteract some of the damage the rest of the media is doing to girls' and women's confidence with endless talks of dieting and plastic surgery.

Yet getting girls into sport is not enough: the far bigger challenge is retaining them through their teenage years. As girls' bodies change and they become more self-conscious about their appearance and as different interests compete for their time, teenage girls tend to drop out of sport at a considerably faster rate than boys. Personally, I pretty much stopped doing sport at the age of 14 and didn't pick it up again until I started kickboxing in my early 20s. In the intervening years increasing self-consciousness about my body combined with PE classes which felt more like torture did more than enough to put me off the idea of exercise. I certainly never expected in my teens that I would one day get a black belt in kickboxing (I'm currently halfway to a second one, in karate), or that I would complete a half-marathon.

Additionally, while elite sport is great, the vast majority of us - male or female - will never be Olympians. It is vital to enable grassroots sport participation and highlight role models across all levels of sport. Being able to see the steps it might take to get to the top, and that success is possible at all levels is also likely to help girls stay in sport through their teens. Yet while Victoria Pendleton, Laura Trott, Lizzie Armitstead and Shanaze Reade, alongside Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins, celebrated amazing achievements in cycling, London remains notoriously unsafe for cyclists, even more so for women. Members of cyclist group Critical Mass were being kettled and arrested during the Olympic opening ceremony. Addressing the abysmally bad cycling facilities in this country would be a huge step for mass participation in sport and would benefit men and women alike.

These are just some of the challenges that people like the Prime Minister, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and UK Sport need to address to truly leverage the Olympic legacy for everybody. For my part, I intend to put my money where my mouth is and watch women's sport more than once every four years when the Olympics are on. Whether it's going to see colleagues play hockey and netball, following your local women's football club, or even just watching the Women's FA Cup final, there at least one thing each of us can do to support women in sport.]]>Where Are the Male Rhythmic Gymnasts?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17643982012-08-10T11:24:57-04:002012-10-10T05:12:15-04:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/milena-popova/Nicola Adams becoming the first ever woman boxer to win an Olympic title. For the first time ever there are now women competing in every sport where men are competing at the Olympics. While this is a great step towards sporting equality, let's face it, we're still far from it. Less funding, less publicity and fewer roles for women in coaching and governance still plague women's sport. Moreover, there are still significant gender-based differences in how some sports are practised, and there are still at least two summer Olympic sports with participation from only one gender: rhythmic gymnastics and synchronised swimming are firmly established as women-only sports.

Women have always strived to be able to compete in sports traditionally reserved for men. Road and track cycling, part of the Olympic programme for men since the first modern games in 1896, didn't allow women competitors until 1984. As recently as the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, track cycling featured seven events for men and only three for women. Women's weightlifting was not included until the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Women's boxing itself has had a more than 100-year-long campaign for inclusion in the games, starting with a demonstration bout in 1904.

So where are the campaigns to include men in traditionally "female" sports? Why do we not see men's rhythmic gymnastics in the demonstration sports? Partly, gymnastics appears to suffer from a governing body that is painfully conservative. We can see this, for instance, in the differences between men's and women's artistic gymnastics. Where men compete on a variety of apparatus testing both upper and lower body strength and agility, women's apparatus is heavily biased towards tumbling and leg-based skills with uneven bars being the only exception. Innovation and the introduction of new moves by gymnasts tends to be penalised, particularly for women. While men will routinely perform a one-armed swing on the high bar, attempts by women to introduce this into uneven bar routines have been discouraged with extremely low difficulty scores being awarded. The aesthetics of gymnastics are also highly regulated. While men generally perform in fairly plain attire, female competitors wear full make-up and sparkly leotards, which only get sparklier as you move to rhythmic gymnastics. Women are expected to perform floor routines to music and include dance moves, but men are not.

When I tweeted about the conspicuous absence of men's rhythmic gymnastics in the Olympics, I was asked if there would even be any competitors. Japan has a strong tradition of men's rhythmic gymnastics, and there are some male competitors in Europe too, but they are not allowed to take part in any of the major events. Moreover, in terms of skillset, there is absolutely no reason why male aerobic gymnasts couldn't make a successful transition to rhythmic gymnastics. Still, it is true that there aren't that many men currently in rhythmic gymnastics, whereas there are, for instance, plenty of women boxers.

We are therefore left with the old problem: things that men do are cool and to be aspired to; things that women do are marginal and niche. Women being allowed to do "men's things" is - rightfully - celebrated as a great accomplishment for equality, but hardly any questions are being asked about men's absence from certain fields. This state of affairs is hardly unique to sport - just look at the gender balance in nursing. The effect is the same, regardless of which gender we are barring from an activity. We are preventing individuals from fulfilling their potential. This is not just a shame for the individuals involved but for society as a whole. We're missing out on male top talent in nursing and gymnastics just as we're missing out on female top talent in science and technology.

One encouraging development is that newer sports being introduced to the Olympics for the first time generally tend to treat men and women equally. Mountain biking (first introduced in 1996) and BMX (2008) both do this. So does Taekwondo (2000), unlike boxing which despite now allowing women's participation has different rules for men and women. Yet if we want true equality, we need to challenge the dinosaurs of sport such as the International Gymnastics Federation, to treat both genders equally across different variations in the sport and to encourage participation from all.]]>A Tale of Two Britainstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17145142012-07-28T16:56:14-04:002012-09-27T05:12:05-04:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/milena-popova/highly misleading narratives about benefits scroungers sponsored by the Prime Minister to cutting taxes for top earners and practically handing the history curriculum to right-wing historian Niall Ferguson, the story this government is telling of what Britain as a nation values is one of individualism, money, and empire.

From teasers and early coverage of rehearsals for the Olympic opening ceremony (turning the stadium into a representation of rural Britain, complete with sheep and all that), I must admit I was expecting a continuation of that story, a sequel to the sickly-sweet pageantry of the Jubilee complete with miles of bunting. Given that it was Danny Boyle running the show, I perhaps did him a disservice. Yet with everyone and everything else who has sold out to turn London into an Olympic-occupied territory with shocking restrictions on free speech, more troops deployed for the games than in Afghanistan, and the infamous Olympic missiles, I can perhaps be forgiven for having extremely low expectations of the opening ceremony.

From the shipping forecast to the hard labour of miners and factory workers during the industrial revolution, to successive waves of immigration, a celebration of the NHS and a jawdropping tour of British culture and music, the Britain Boyle showed us was idiosyncratic, diverse, multicultural and fun. This is after all the country that gave us the World Wide Web and gave Saudi state television its first lesbian kiss. There is a place here for everyone: black, brown or white, young or old, able-bodied or otherwise, male, female, straight, gay, born here or overseas, it is all of us who make this country the amazing place that it is. This is the Britain fell in love with, the reason why ten years after finishing the degree I came here for I am still in this country. It is arguably also a Britain that doesn't, strictly speaking, exist.

In between all the sound and fury, the celebration of different people and cultures coming together, there are plenty of those who do not wish for this Britain to exist. One Tory MP called the spectacle "leftie multi-cultural crap". At the same time as winged figures cycled into the stadium in another stunning set piece, police outside were kettling and manhandling peacfully protesting cyclists. Then of course there are the aforementioned troops and Olympic missiles. Danny Boyle's vision doesn't quite match reality. It is, however, a representation of the best of Britain, of Britain as many of us would like it to be, of the kind of Britain many of us a working towards. At a time like this, when the story of these isles is so hotly contested, creating such a powerful, inclusive and inspirational vision, and using the greatest global marketing campaign to do so, is a truly audacious political statement.

The crowning achievement of the night was - how could it be anything else? - the lighting of the cauldron. Not one single cauldron but 204 individual petals representing the nations taking part in the Olympics. Not one single mega-star carrying the torch those final few steps but seven young athletes, lighting that Olympic flame together. At a time when individualism has practically become a religion, when we are worshipping the rich, famous and powerful, the cauldron and the seven young people who lit it are a stunning symbol of what we can achieve by working together and supporting each other. Against the backdrop of multicultural, diverse Britain which serves as a reminder that we can still be individuals, there is immense power in that image.

Danny Boyle has stuck up two fingers to the story of individualism, money and empire and given us a vision to work towards. Just when many of us have begun to wonder whether we can turn the tide of selfishness, pettiness and narrow-mindedness that seems to be sweeping the country with this government, whether we can tell a different story, Boyle has given us that story and reminded us that we, indeed, can build Jerusalem.]]>Economic Literacy Mondaytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10796852011-11-07T10:58:03-05:002012-01-07T05:12:01-05:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/milena-popova/Ernst & Young ITEM Club - an independent economic forecasting think tank which uses the same economic models as the Treasury - has today published a report on the inflation outlook for the UK over the short to medium term [PDF]. Coverage of this has been slow and not terribly helpful. I caught a snippet on Radio 4, but to get anything even vaguely meaningful, you would have had to listen to Radio 5 Live's Wake up to Money at 5.30 this morning.

On Wake up to Money, Neil Blake, a senior economic advisor at the ITEM club suggested that a lot of the inflation we have seen over the last three or so years has been "imported" or outside the control of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). This kind of imported inflation was due to sharp increases in commodity prices, primarily food and energy. "Domestically generated inflation", he said, was relatively low. Given the economic outlook, Mr. Blake suggested, the MPC's current inflation target of 2% may be unrealistic and he proposed two options for addressing this:

Option 1 would be to increase the MPC's inflation target. Even a modest increase of half a percentage point for 2.5% would give the MPC considerable flexibility to absorb imported inflation.

Option 2 would be to target a different measure of inflation - one that allowed us to strip out elements beyond our control such as food and energy, and enabled us to focus on the "domestically generated" part of inflation.

It is that "domestically generated" inflation that I want to look at. In basic terms, inflation is a general rise in prices: items which yesterday cost you £1 to buy today cost £1.02. The same amount of money, therefore, buys less "stuff". Obviously increased prices of raw materials or energy will have an impact on inflation. So will raising sales taxes such as VAT - something which has happened twice in the last two years, once at the reversal of the temporary VAT cut and once at the beginning to this year when the rate went up to 20%. These are either external factors beyond our control or one-off occurrences which will not affect inflation next year. There are, however, other factors domestic factors which can influence inflation, and by far the biggest of those is wages, followed by profits. These are the "domestically generated" pressures on prices and components of inflation. What Neil Blake is therefore saying is that while food and energy prices will continue to rise and that is beyond the MPC's control, one way of keeping inflation down is to focus on - essentially - keeping wages down. It is an interesting euphemism, that "domestically generated inflation".

In all fairness, if you read the full ITEM Club report, a slightly different picture emerges. Far from making any specific recommendations, the report acknowledges the weaknesses of both options. It stresses that any attempt to keep the domestically generated parts of inflation down is likely to have a strong negative impact on growth and thus highlights the challenges facing policy makers. It also looks at the shares of wages and profits in gross output - in other words, how much of GDP goes to labour and how much to capital. There are a few items of note here:

Over the last 40 years, there is a slight but perceptible downward trend in labour's share of GDP and an equally slight but perceptible upward trend in capital's share. The downward trend for wages as a share of GDP is particularly pronounced from the 70s until the mid-90s (say around 1997), after which labour's share of the pie stabilises.

The ITEM club looks at the effect that changes in the share of GDP of imports and indirect taxes have on the shares of labour and capital. What they find is that taxes tend to squeeze labour's share of the economy, not capital's.

Globalisation, together with rising commodity prices and competition in international labour and product markets, is likely to further squeeze labour's share of the pie.

Finally, "the recovery when it comes will benefit capital more than labour." This will, of course, further exacerbate already high levels of inequality in the UK.

Overall, the ITEM club report makes for very interesting reading and acknowledges that we will continue to face economic challenges over the short to medium term. The most important conclusion I draw from the report is this: If the government suddenly decides to change what the Bank of England is targeting in its efforts to manage inflation, and particularly to "exclude factors beyond our control", remember what this means. Remember that "targeting domestically generated inflation" is code for "keeping wages down".
]]>The Conservatives on Europe: A Dictionarytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10282462011-10-24T09:39:15-04:002011-12-24T05:12:01-05:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/milena-popova/Bernard Jenkin MP: "It's about growth. The economy is not growing, and one of the reasons why the economy is not growing is ... a business survey showed that over £60 billions per year of burden of EU regulation rests on our economy now. (...) We used to have well below the average of youth unemployment, we're now on the average and youth unemployment is growing."

Translation: "I need someone to blame for this mess, and the 'previous government's legacy' line doesn't quite wash anymore. Who else is around? Ah, the EU! Quick, let's make up some numbers!"

Here are some questions I would like to ask of the Member for Harwich and North Essex:

If the EU is the major reason why the UK economy is not growing, then how come the economy was able to grow in previous periods despite EU membership? How are other member states' economies growing?

Similarly for youth unemployment, how come Germany has the lowest unemployment rate since re-unification, if it is the EU that is stopping our kids from being able to get a job? How come this staggering rise in youth unemployment coincides with government cuts in investment in skills and education for our youth, such as the increase of tuition fees and the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance?

What alternatives to EU membership is Mr Jenkin proposing? What impact does he believe they would have on Britain's trade with the EU and the British economy as a whole? How would they reduce this enormous "regulatory burden" he is speaking of?

There's the rub: if Britain wishes to continue trading with the largest single market on the planet, it is going to have to take the regulations that go with that. Surely, it is better to have a seat at the table when it comes to creating those regulations. And while we're making up numbers, the EU has some of its very own. Unsurprisingly, they show an increase in GDP and jobs directly attributable to the Single Market, and an appreciable decrease in "red tape".

This can be neatly translated as "We want a pick-and-mix Europe. We will play nicely when it suits us and when we're directly benefiting from our membership but will refuse to lift a finger to actually contribute to the community."

Economists have a word for this kind of behaviour: it's called "free-riding"; see also "tragedy of the commons". There is a fatal flaw with this kind of thinking and it's this: if the UK "renegotiates the terms", other countries will either not allow that or want much the same thing for themselves. After all, if the UK can reap the rewards of membership without fully contributing, why shouldn't everyone else? You can see where this is heading. If no one wants to contribute, if everyone only cherry-picks the best bits for themselves, sooner rather than later there'll be no community left, and no benefits for anyone to pick.

William Hague MP: "There can be very small, narrow treaty changes, there can be major treaty changes. (...) I do not believe that it is in every instance (...) that you need to have referendum."

This is of course code for "We will give you a referendum when it's in our interest and we think we can get the outcome we want from it."

Ultimately this raises the question of whether referenda are a meaningful way to decide on complex constitutional issues such as electoral reform or EU membership. My experience from the recent AV referendum would suggest that they are useful only under certain conditions, which are unlikely to be present if and when it comes to a referendum on the nature of Britain's EU membership or future treaty changes. Referendum campaigns - especially ones which happen under time pressure, as any campaign on a treaty change would - tend to boil down extremely complex issue into five-word slogans. "Small change, big difference" and "She needs a maternity unit, not an Alternative Voting system", some of the key slogans from both sides of the AV campaign, are patronising, overly simplistic, lacking in substance. Now imagine having to reduce something like the Lisbon Treaty into a slogan. Far from increasing the level and quality of political debate, referenda like the one on AV or any we are likely to get on the European Union have a tendency to shut debate down. Only if political discourse can develop naturally, over and appropriate time span which allows for issues to be explored in depth - like for instance in the proposed Scottish independence referendum - are referenda a truly meaningful way of making political choices. So in some ways, this whole debate is a huge red herring.

William Hague MP: "...the return of other powers to the United Kingdom, particularly in the field of social and employment laws, things like the Working Time Directive, things of that kind."

Read: "Rights for workers? What is this EU nonsense? You must be joking!"

It always strikes me how the first (and as far as I can tell only) area of community competency that William Hague wants to repatriate is to do with social justice, equality, and protecting workers. He's been singing that particular song ever since he was Tory leader and came to speak at my school in Vienna about Britain's awkward relationship with the EU. Let's have a quick look at the much-maligned Working Time Directive, for instance. These are some of the things it regulates:

It makes it a right to not have to work more than 48 hours in a week. Given that UK workers give their employers £29 billion of free overtime every year, this kind of limit seems sensible to me.

It stipulates that you should get at least 11 hours' rest in every 24-hour period. Doctors, therefore, don't get to pull 36-hour shifts anymore. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be treated by a doctor who isn't about to collapse from exhaustion.

It says that you should be allowed break at work. These can help prevent anything from deterioration of your eye sight and RSI to major injuries and fatalities. They also reduce stress. So the NHS doesn't need to spend money on treating these conditions. Sounds like a good deal to me.

It regulates the amount of night work you can do, and the conditions under which you can do it. See prevention of health problems, and which doctor would you prefer to be treated by, above.

It also says that you are entitled to a minimum number of days of annual leave. And while this can be inconvenient when you discover in August that you still have 20 days to take before Christmas, it also allows you to switch off and recover occasionally, further contributing to prevention of stress and other conditions.

If this is William Hague's main bone of contention with the EU, then I know what side I stand on. And if you are an employee of any kind - salaried, agency worker, occasional - then so should you.

The Europe debate is of course one that is never far from the surface on this sceptered isle. Yet bringing all this to the fore right now, as the EU and the Eurozone struggle to find the political will to overcome a huge crisis, and as it becomes increasingly apparent that the UK economy itself will need some sort of intervention to get moving again seems a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Mind you, it's entertaining enough.]]>What Have Immigrants Ever Done For Us?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10003722011-10-10T09:00:00-04:002011-12-10T05:12:02-05:00Milena Popovahttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/milena-popova/ten-line blip in a seven-page speech David Cameron made back in April, whenever immigration comes up in the news in this country it is in a negative context. Ed Balls says Labour let too many of the likes of me in, and Theresa May seems to think that the country is overrun by evil immigrant cats - or something like that. Yet every day, millions of immigrants work hard, pay our taxes and try to contribute to the British economy and society as best we can - much like everyone else in the country. Here are some examples of what immigrants do for this country.

Work hard

The lady who cleans my house every couple of weeks is Bulgarian and works for an agency where the majority of the staff are from my native country too. This is not because of some Great Immigrant Conspiracy; but when I was looking for a cleaner I left voicemails for about five different companies, and by the time I got to this one I was so fed up I didn't even bother. Five minutes later my phone rang: "We're sorry we missed your call, madam. How can we help?" It was only when the proprietor turned up at my house to assess it that we found out we were from the same country.

My cleaner works hard. Sometimes she gets in at 7.30 in the morning, before I've left for work, and sometimes she leaves my house at 6pm and goes to yet another client. She puts up with all my idiosyncrasies, the constant mess that is my house thanks to my full-time job and numerous extracurricular activities, the occasional last-minute request for her to rearrange her entire schedule and please come back later. On top of that, most of the staff at the agency are doing NVQ qualifications in order to improve the service they give customers.

My cleaner and her colleagues are not the only ones who work hard. Claudia is from Germany. She works with autistic people. Michelle is American. She works as a producer and project manager for performance artists. Currently she is working on a project involving the performance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in various languages, including Sign. The nuclear physics group of a certain Scottish university is made up of 15 people of ten different nationalities. Immigrants can be found in every profession and walk of life, working hard to contribute to the economy and make a better life for themselves and their families.

Play hard

Sometimes even when we play, we work. When my Scottish friend Morna put out a call on Twitter earlier this year for developers, marketers and media professionals to help her start up her business using the unique "Sweatshop" method, I am not sure what she expected. What she got was a motley crew of 30 or so passionate professionals. While there were sizable English and Scottish contingents among us, immigrants were disproportionately represented. About a third of the Founders' Team came from all over the world: Slovenia, Poland, Italy, Israel, Australia, South Africa, Denmark. In exchange for free food and lodgings and a small number of shares in the start-up, we travelled to Dundee and put three weekends' worth of hard graft into bootstrapping a business from nothing. We didn't do it for the money, nor for the glory. We did it because it was fun and because we believed in the project: a social platform with the potential to revolutionise adult and higher education in this country.

The FlockEdu crowd aren't the only ones combining work and play. Kathryn, who is Canadian, uses her skills as a musician and composer to run her local church choir. Iman, a writer of Pakistani origin who grew up in Saudi Arabia, donates her time and skills to various campaigning groups and political publications. Even in something as British as the recent referendum on the voting system, we had a fair number of immigrants doing their bit to improve democratic representation for UK citizens.

Care in the community

It often strikes me how disproportionately engaged immigrants are in the communities I'm involved with. At the Star & Shadow, a small, entirely volunteer-run cinema and arts space in Newcastle where I occasionally help out, people from all over the world are at the heart of the community, side by side with our British friends. Stephanie from France runs great seasons of foreign films or cult British television sci-fi. Yaron from Israel puts on gigs with the most weird and wonderful local bands, giving them a much-needed opportunity for exposure. Cathy from China pulls pints like a pro behind the Star & Shadow bar.

I spoke to Margarida, a 23-year-old Portuguese woman who is a Volunteer Coordinator and member of the Forest Action Team. For her, the Forest is a home and a family. Even after her European Volunteer Service funding ran out, Margarida chose to stay in Edinburgh.

"I couldn't leave the Forest behind in such a crucial moment. Right now, the Forest needs everyone and I'm here to help bring the Forest back with everything I have to give, be it time, energy, creativity."

She wants to make sure that the Forest lives and continues to provide a unique and amazing space and service to everyone in Edinburgh. At the same time, she is making new friends, learning new skills, developing projects old and new. Margarida finds Edinburgh as a city and the Forest as a community warm and welcoming - only the British press with its persistently negative coverage of immigration worries her; though, she adds cynically, it doesn't surprise her.

Not only arts spaces but also charities which provide vital services often benefit from the contribution of immigrant volunteers. Mara, from the US, runs the Abortion Support Network - the only charity which provides practical help and funds to women from Northern and Southern Ireland who need to travel to England for an abortion. She and her small volunteer team provide a non-judgmental listening service, factual and impartial information, and much-needed funds and accommodation for women who otherwise would not be able to access safe and legal abortions. Immigrant volunteers are at the heart of the "Big Society".

An experience many of us immigrants have in common is a kind of multiple personality disorder we observe in the country we have chosen to make our home. One on one, as individuals, we are welcomed by our British friends. We find communities we can contribute to and integrate in. We find people who reach out a helping hand, like the English Language Conversation Group at the Star & Shadow. We find our contributions valued. When, however, it comes to political gain and newspaper circulations, things turn quickly to an "us and them" mentality which is healthy for no one.

Recognising immigrants' contributions to this country is the first step towards recognising how much we all have to learn from each other - and how much we can all gain from truly being "in this together".]]>